>a fundamental definition of "usefulness" is directly (or exponentially, rather) related to the size of the network. It's not the only aspect of value, but it i

>a fundamental definition of "usefulness" is directly (or exponentially, rather) related to the size of the network. It's not the only aspect of value, but it is exponential, ad hard to beat. No that is not true. Judging from my experience with various subreddits anything above 100k quickly becomes trash. You don't need as many users as possible. >One of the reasons amoral commercial efforts like fb won is because this modus operandi happens to harmonize standard commercial MO with what a network is. For what facebook wants to be i.e. a profile for all your contacts that is indeed the case. For hobby/activity related communities that's not true. >I'm not sure this relates to federation though. Niche communities don't need to be federated. It does relate to federation because right now if I open a new subreddit I am bound to the wishes of the company and they can change the UI in such a massive way that any community that benefits from long-form text posts quickly dysfunctional. I have noticed the gradual decline in content and comment quality on reddit since the redesign and the push for mobile app usage and it's slowly creeping into every subreddit out there. With a federated alternative to reddit I could launch a server on my own and have control over how the community evolves over time( or rather, people who have the community's best interests in mind can in general). I hope someone takes what Mastodon does and make a reddit alternative.